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June 3, 2015
Day: 10 Daily Miles: 51.5 Total Miles: 471 Hours Hiking: 16
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| Heading down to the North Fork Ranger Station. Fog come back! |
June 3rd, I went 51.5 miles, to trail mile 471.25, which actually was the now....whats the word for it....now close, or now removed Oasis Cache from the Anderson's, which is point 0375170 E 3830525 N UTM. Ugghhhooo...I knew the day was going to be a 50-miler when I started, that was my go, because, truly there wasn't that many obstacles..and a lot of downhill, a lot of not-hard, I guess you'd say. The obstacles...nonetheless did surprise me. So, I started about 0.5-1 mile away from the Mill Creek Fire Station, spent the night with good views. Then I got up and started the main poodle-dog brush section...which...GOD, I'm so glad it's been cleared like it has. I mean there is still some poodle-dog brush that you have to dodge, but not like 2012. So, I made great time...the first obstacle was Mt. Gleason, and along the way I passed about 4-5 people...one of them recognized me from a facebook post about me starting. Then, about 10 miles later, I made it to the top of Mt. Gleason, and bombed down that backside. Good views all around. It looked like LA was in fog and we were on the last strip of land that was not in fog, it was all still below us. It seemed to be making its way over...Yeeaahh, it was a pretty easy morning really. I got on down to the North Fork Ranger Station, where there were about 6-7 hikers hanging out with the caretaker, who had water. I had a banana, because they were available. I spent about 5-10 minutes there chatting with those guys because they were all interested.
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| Between Soledad Canyon and Vasquez Rocks. |
I had a great fast morning. After that I just dropped down to Soledad Canyon/Acton and then jumped back up and over to Agua Dulce. Which, both of those went great....I was always chasing the fog though. Luckily it was over Agua Dulce until about 2:00 pm, and I just couldn't get to it or under it, it was kinda sad that I had missed it. It would have made the afternoon of the hike much nicer. Yeah, down Soledad, that thing is steep, but, that's what trekking poles are for...to help your knees. I passed another hiker there...it was windy at least, a good breeze, so the sun wasn't that hot. I was feeling pretty good, because once you set that goal of 50 in your mind, you know you can't stop, you just have to keep moving, and downhills always make you happy...(laughs) usually....unless the are really steep...because it means you came from somewhere high, which took a heck of a lot of effort to get up there, so you have to enjoy the little things. I got down to Soledad, crossed over, went up and through the big sedimentary beds, which took me a little longer than I remembered, but I finally got to Vasquez Rocks, which is a neat part of the trail...you get to wander through the big slabs and things, I filled up my water at the horse trough watering area at Vasquez Rocks.
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| Raven in the beginning of Vasquez Rocks. |
I did the road walk right on into Agua Dulce, stopped at the market and got...a few things actually...lets see...I got a Mt. Dew, because I knew there was a big climb coming up, I got a king sized Drumstick, cause ice cream sounded wonderful, I got a sandwich from the deli, and I got 5 breakfast...breakfast roll croissant things, because I really don't feel like eating my pre-made granola or grapenut mixes...so I have been, whenever I can, exchanging them out with like 5-600 calorie pre-made hostess roll things, which are great...they are really easy to eat on trail, I can walk and eat them, plus I don't have to worry about the mess of milk or leaking bags...and its quick. If they would keep long enough....which they probably would, I've never checked...I probably would have done that as my resupply option for breakfast, because they are great, and they even taste good smashed! So yeah, that's what I snagged from Agua Dulce. I ate the ice cream promptly, as well as the sandwich, because that was my lunch, as I did the 4 mile road walk out of town, which was a pain...I will filled up with water, because I knew I wasn't going to make it to water before the next day, so I would have to camp out and have enough for the 15 miles or so from Agua Dulce, plus the next 7 miles in the morning to get water. So, I had a heavy load heading out from Agua Dulce, up the big giant hill, which, after climbing and looking at the switchbacks, I'm pretty certain, that the engineers doing that section have no clue what the hell switchbacks are...like, they go across the mountains, then hit a canyon, where they make you go up the ridge...so it will be pretty flat, really nice and easy, then all of a sudden you'd hit this ridgeline and go screaming up super hard, and then it would kind of round out to another switchback or another kind of easy contour line going across the mountain, then hit another ridge and go up again!
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| Vasquez Rocks. |
WHY THE HELL, didn't you just make it the same grade, put in the 180 degree turn and go back the opposite direction, but that the same grade and bring yourself up the mountain? It's not anymore enjoyable to do what they did...even if you get to traverse more, I mean it's not really changing the view all that much, so, that pissed me off...But, there is a lot of stuff on trail where you go "what the hell were they thinking???" I'm sure there are boundary issues and some rock face you can't see, but often times, it would seem that they are dumb in how they have made the trail. After about an hour of hard work and sweat in the 5-6:00 pm sun, it was getting low, I made it to the top. I could see the next ridge over, but about 8 miles away, where I would be pretty much ending for the night...the fog and clouds were creeping back in, so I bombed down the trail....2 skunks were on the trail...that was interesting, a grown up and a little baby...I saw them a little ways away so I started yelling and they got off trail...eventually. Then, I got to the Bouquet Dam Road [Bouquet Canyon Road] or whatever and saw some footprints...I must have passed the person, as the person never appeared..I saw them ahead of me, they crested the big climb [out of Agua Dulce] but from them on, they were gone.....So then I started up, it was another long and slow and evil climb...but I finally made it, to the top...with some help of the Mt. Dew and caffeine...and when I got to the top, I was definitely in the clouds... I couldn't really see, the sun had set...
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| The famous rocks that ARE Vasquez Rocks. |
It was about 8:30 pm, so I decided that I needed to get down, far enough at least not to be in the clouds, otherwise I'd be wet, so I went another mile or so...and I looked at the map and saw that there was a campsite marked at about 0.25 miles more, so I went there....and low and behold, it was the old Oasis Cache site from the Anderson's. And there were already 2 people there sleeping. I thought like "damnit...." Well, I didn't care at that point...I'm like, I've got 51.25 miles...you guys haven't done that, its only like 9:05 pm, so you can deal with this [me making nose for 10 minutes]. I set up camp, about 10 ft away from both of them, under some trees, and proceeded to try and be as quiet as possible and got my stuff together....and gratefully laid down and went to bed after a long day....It went well, I had hit 50 miles before 9:00 pm, which was great and I got up at like 5:30 am, and it was a good day. It's nice when you know the terrain at least so you can plan ahead and set your goals high. I wanted to go big too, because Hikertown....the bigger I went that day, or today, the closer Hikertown would be. I should actually be stopping there tomorrow night, I've got about a 46 mile day, so 46 mile day into a resupply will be great, and I might get to charge my phone up completely and get a good nights sleep!
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| A view from the top of Mount Gleason in the morning before heading down to North Fork Ranger Station. |
